


Little Beast

by darkandstormyslash



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Feels, Based on the poem "Little Beast" by Richard Siken which everyone should read, First Time, Homophobic world, Just something I wanted to get down, M/M, general sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25048411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can dois stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Little Beast

1\. An all-night barbeque

Drunk teens and fire don’t mix well. The party is a disaster before it’s even started, but Steve is there anyway, hunched in a corner, a plastic cup of listless punch in his hand. The smell of something burning is everywhere and Steve can only hope it’s meant to be food. Inedible food is the best case scenario here.

Somewhere out in the crowd is Billy Hargrove. Even without being able to see him, Steve feels he can  _ sense _ the presence of him. Deep and drawing and  _ loathing _ \- Billy loathes like nobody else Steve has ever seen. Hatred is in the core of him, leaking out in rage and anger. If there's a fire Billy will start it, and dance in the flames.

It seems like Billy is a permanent feature now. He will always be here. Steve watches him dancing with the girls, drinking the beer, loud and heavy as he struts through the crowd. He can’t help but feel a strange sort of tingling jealousy. 

Maybe it’s for what Billy is. Maybe it’s just for Billy.

2\. Explaining is an admission of failure

“Do you hate me?” Steve asks down the phone, exasperated. “I can’t work you out, Hargrove, what do you  _ want _ ?”

“I’m going to fuck your girlfriends mom.” Billy snarls back at him.

The line goes dead.

Steve thinks:  _ I really need to get better at asking people out _ .

3\. I know history

The first time Steve sees Neil’s hand crack across Billy’s face it’s like the world slows down and never speeds back up again. A missing piece of a puzzle that he hadn’t realised was incomplete, an extra sentence in a story revealing an entire prequel. 

_ Oh _ .

It doesn’t really change things between them, Billy’s still an asshole at school and even worse at home, but it’s  _ there _ . Sitting like a leaden weight. It shifts the balance, it shifts the equilibrium, it makes a lot of things more complicated but a few things a little simpler.

“What do you want, Hargrove?” Steve asks again down the phone. 

“I want you to fuck off.” Billy snarls back at him.

So Steve turns up the next day, the next party, the next evening. Because he saw Neil hit Billy and, more importantly, Billy  _ knows _ he saw.

There are probably neat ways to describe it. There are sensible little boxes to put Billy in, most of them marked with a warning sign. But Steve doesn’t know what those are.

4\. I wanted to be wanted

Billy laughs, lips wide and red, hands all over Steve’s naked body, “It’s the ass, Harrington, it goes in the ass.”

Steve flushes, ashamed of his own ignorance. He’s helpless, hopeless, powerless before this boy with blue eyes and the desperation he feels for him. He  _ wants _ Billy, in an undefinable way. His movements, his smell, his body. Steve wants to reach out and take the entire life-force of Billy Hargrove and swallow it down to somewhere it will be safe and protected, combined within him, molded in diamond instead of in glass.

Billy sneers down at him, “How the fuck did you not know that?”

How the hell would he? Hawkins isn’t the centre of gay sexual experimentation. Steve has very little idea what is going on at the best of times. He reaches forward for Billy and warm tanned hands splay over his hips. There’s a sudden lurch in the world, an opening of a box that, once opened, cannot be put away.

“Grease up Harrington, unless you want to lose the skin off your dick.”

It takes Steve a moment, a heartbeat, a world, to realise what Billy even means. He never has been good at working out what Billy wants. In front of him Billy turns, and the understanding crystallizes in front of him, sharp and clear. He’s going to, he’s going to be allowed to - oh god … and he surges forward with an eagerness that’s uncontainable. There are yelps and trembles from beneath him and Steve knows, he  _ knows _ , that there’s no way Billy Hargrove of all people can possibly be a virgin. 

When he took Nancy Wheeler’s virginity he stroked her hair, petted her back, and told her over and over  _ I love you baby, you’re beautiful baby, I need you baby _ . He doesn’t think Billy would like that, so instead he rocks and grunts, gripping hard and fucking down until the tightness finally,  _ finally  _ yields. Billy’s cries turn to moans, his hands slip against the sheets, the sweat and smell of him all mingling with the sound of skin against skin. Because Billy Hargrove could have any woman in Hawkins but he’s chosen Steve.

Billy Hargrove after a fuck is a different creature altogether. Soft trembling arms wrap around Steve’s body, while sighing exhausted breath ghosts against his chest. The heat of the summer against their skin, the threat of Billy’s father hanging over them and the yawning depths of the Upside-Down clawing at their feet. They’re caught in the middle, helpless and floating, twisting and drowning, struggling through currents to strong to be maintained.

“That was a hell of a thing.” Billy murmurs into his skin.

5\. Mirrors and shop windows

If Billy ever was a virgin, he isn’t one now. They fuck often, wildly, as if throwing each other into each other will break down the walls between them. In the beginning, full of the wild joy of it, Steve can almost believe the fantasies they’re trying to create. That maybe if they fuck each other enough, Neil will stop being an abusive jerk. If they cling tight enough when they’re done, Steve’s father will stop being a homophobic dick. If they kiss, and sometimes they do kiss, they can drag themselves right through the upside-down and out to a better place on the other side.

Billy used to punch him, now Billy kisses him. It’s somewhere at the end of June that Steve realises, with a sad empty ache, that to Billy those things are not so different. The tilting world crashes back down again. They aren’t pioneers into some brave new world, they’re two grubby teens who can’t stop being horny for long enough to face up to the consequences of the things they’re doing. 

6\. Running out of lullabies

“You need to get out.” Steve says, “You need to walk out of that house and get away from him before he kills you.”

It’s too late, he knows. Both too late and too early. Billy’s face is a mess of bruise and blood, his lip torn and split. It twists up as Billy’s hand cracks down hard, stinging worse than Steve ever would’ve imagined. A blaze of pain lights up in his cheek, and an unpleasant feeling of childhood, of smallness, of helplessness, washes over him

The look he sees in Billy’s eyes keeps him up at night. Anger and terror, at the world and at himself.  _ You are not your father! _ he wants to scream, but he doesn’t know whether Billy will believe him and right now he’s not sure if he believes himself. He turns away, cold, walks out of the room and leaves it a good week before he walks back in again.  _ You are not your father _ . He spends less time hanging out with Billy, and stops going to the parties he knows Billy will go to. He doesn’t find out until later that Billy stops going to them as well.

They still fuck though, because what else can they do? It’s a release, and it’s an escape, and it’s dragging them down. 

7\. I couldn’t get the boy to kill me (but I wore his jacket for the longest time)

Billy leaves on a Sunday, right after church. He comes around to Steve’s house beforehand, on Saturday night, full of beer and hurt. Steve wants to say  _ sorry _ , and  _ why _ , and  _ but I was your first, _ but he doesn’t know how to say any of them so instead they hold onto each other, silent and frantic until the morning breaks.

“I could’ve been more gentle,” is all Steve says on Sunday morning, and Billy gives him a crooked smile. 

“You didn’t break me, Harrington.”

They both broke each other, and they both put each other back together again. If Billy stays, Steve isn’t sure whether they’d circle right back around to the breaking. The taste of it is bitter-sweet as Billy drives away from him for the very last time. Steve doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks by now there’s probaly a surf-shop somewhere in California run by a sunshine boy in bare feet who lives by the sea.

It’s cold in Illinois. Steve’s glad Billy left his jacket.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit embarrassing.  
> There's something very early-2000s ff.net about Poetry Fic. 
> 
> Everyone should go and read Little Beast though, it's probably one of the best American poems ever written.


End file.
